Bain & Company shared new ways to manage talent and teams for greater flexibility and scale even during coronavirus situation

Summary:

Bain & Company explained talent management principles used by agile companies that can scale businesses even in crisis. Some recommendations include:

• Work on Business Building Skills – Build talent and capabilities around important skills such as increasing speed or efficiency, innovation, customer relations, networking and partnerships, flexible capital structures, and business expansion or scale
• Shift from Management to Shareholder Mindset – Move beyond standardization, routines and process discipline that characterized professional management, to greater shareholder accountability, aligning management actions to shareholder results
• Try New Working Models – Examples include cross-functional teams, greater decision-making, streamlining of rules, setting short-term goals, giving constant feedback, and reinvigorating compensation systems
• Improve Support for Mission-Critical Roles – Shift more resources to people that deliver firm’s promise to customers and reduce obstacles keeping them from success, including bureaucratic systems
• Organize Into Smaller Self-Managed Teams – Create smaller cross-functional teams who disrupt products and services, deliver prototypes and scale execution across organization, with ability to demobilize when new projects come
• Focus Leaders on Competitive Advantage – Generate more “spiky leaders” with two to three core competencies for delivering company’s competitive advantage
• Design New Career Development Tracks – Allow individuals to expand career options based on roles taken, capabilities and skillsets, trainings/certifications acquired, rather than confined to career laddering system

To read more about Bain & Company’s insights, visit https://www.bain.com/insights/the-new-deal-for-talent/

Original publication date: June 15, 2020

Date last updated: June 22, 2020